In the Box
In the box you will find a 3 inch USB cable, user manuals, a Nokia headset, and a charger. The phone also comes with a 4 GB microSD card, which is already installed in the phone and is extremely hard to get out.
Physical Appearance
The phone is pretty light at just 115 grams. It is also small and easily fits into your pocket. The phone has a couple of hardware keys including the menu, send, end, power, and lock buttons. It also has a button on the top of the screen giving you easy access to all of your media and the web browser. On the side there is also a sim card and microSD card slot. They are both extremely hard to take out. On the other side there is a lock switch, volume keys, and a dedicated camera key. On the top you will find the USB port, the charging port, and the power button. A strange thing about the Nuron is that it does not charge through USB, but with a separate charger. On the bottom there is the microphone and a hole for a lanyard.
User interface
The user interface is pretty much unchanged from previous S60 phones. The home screen offers shortcuts to contacts or applications, and is relatively clean looking. Kinetic scrolling has been integrated into most of the menus, but it is not very smooth. You also have to double tap items to select them, which is unusual, but easy to get used to. The menus are pretty easy to get around in, and they do this without sacrificing the ability to customize everything. Customization is pretty easy, especially with all of the themes available in the Ovi Store. You can also switch through a number of profiles, allowing you to quickly change the settings of the phone if you are in a meeting or just somewhere where you do not want your phone to ring. Overall, the user interface is pretty good. It could use a little fine-tuning and the scrolling is a little rough, but for the most part it is good enough.
Web browsing
Web browsing in S60 is the same as it has always been. The browser has not been changed much, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t great. The browser supports full HTML. Since the screen is resistive and does not support multitouch so you will not be able to pinch-to-zoom, which is a big disadvantage. You can still use the handy zoom bar, or double tap. Since the phone supports 3G web browsing is fairly fast. The browser does lag a little at times, but you can install Opera mini or Skyfire browsers, which have more features, and are in my opinion, better browsers. T-Mobile’s 3G network gives you access to 3G in most areas and it is fairly fast. The 3G connectivity makes up for the lack of WiFi on the Nuron.
GPS
GPS on Nokia devices is great now that Ovi Maps has become free for all Nokia devices. With Ovi Maps you can get free turn-by-turn navigation with voice guidance, offline maps, and more. Offline maps are a great feature for people who do not have a data plan. Voice guidance is also great and available in a large variety of languages. Now that Google have released Google Maps with voice guidance for Android, Symbian is not the only smartphone operating system with free voice guidance. The GPS receiver is also very accurate and supports assisted GPS for faster fix times. Usually the GPS receiver finds my location within a couple of seconds, even without assisted GPS. Overall, GPS navigation on the Nuron is great. If you do not like Nokia’s Ovi Maps navigation software for whatever reason, there are many alternatives available.
Call Quality
Call quality is great on the Nuron. You can hear the person that you are talking to very clearly and they can hear you just as well. The speakerphone is also loud and clear. The phone does not support video calling but there are third party applications that enable it. Calling on the Nuron is great.
Camera
The camera on the Nokia 5230 Nuron is 2 megapixels, but it seems like a lot more. The camera does not have autofocus or flash, but it still takes very high quality photos and videos (for a cell phone camera). Videos are recorded at a VGA resolution and at 30 fps. Low light photos are grainy and not very high quality but in normal lighting conditions photo quality is average. The camera also features geo-tagging so that you can know exactly where your photos were taken. You can also customize a lot of the camera settings easily. The phone comes with a 4 GB microSD card so you have a lot of room for photos, videos, music, and other media. Overall, the Nuron’s camera is great for taking photos every once and a while or when you don’t have a higher quality camera with you.
Input methods on the Nuron aren’t different from input methods on other devices. If you have the device in portrait mode you get a standard t9 keyboard, and if you tilt the device so that it is in landscape mode, you get a full keyboard. One of the unique features of the Nuron is that it has handwriting recognition, which is a little hard to use, but it is still there, which is a plus. A bad thing about text input on the Nuron is that when you are inputting text the keyboard takes up almost the entire screen, and you have a small text field on top, so if you were typing something in the browser you would not see the webpage.
Applications
Out of the box the Nuron includes all of the default applications including a music player, the gallery, and more. Music on the Nuron is great especially with the 3.5mm port, which allows you to connect any standard headphones. Music quality directly from the phone is also pretty good. The phone also comes with office applications and can open a large variety of files. The Nokia Nuron also has access to most of the applications in the Ovi Store. Applications are available for almost all purposes and more are being added continuously. You can also download S60 applications from other sources. A great thing about the Nuron is that it supports multitasking, and with 128 megabytes of RAM you can run a lot of apps are the same time. Applications on S60 are not that advanced or anywhere close to how great iPhone applications are, but they are still pretty good.
Performance
The Nokia Nuron’s performance is great. With 128 MB of RAM and a 434 MHz processor everything runs quickly and smoothly. You can also run multiple apps at the same time without any problems. The 1320 mAh battery is also great. I was able to use the phone for about 5 days with moderate calling, messaging, and web browsing. I also used it for GPS navigation. The phone’s battery life is better than some high-end phones and I think that it is the best that it could possibly be. Web browsing is the thing that drains the battery the most, but even if you are web browsing a lot the battery will still last for 1-2 days. The Nuron is fast, responsive, and has great battery life. Overall, the performance of the Nuron is great.
Overview
The Nokia 5230 Nuron is pretty much the 5230 for T-mobile. T-mobile is selling it for $70 with a 2 year contract. This is an outrageous price considering that it is about $140 off contract. Plus, you are signing a 2 year contract, and the ETF is about $200. Of course, it can be found for cheaper at most places. T-mobile also does not require you to purchase it with a data plan so you can avoid the $10 a month data plan cost. This is worth it especially with Ovi Maps, which can be used offline. A big disadvantage of the Nuron is that the screen is resistive, which means that there is no multitouch, pinch-to-zoom, or other gestures. There are also not as many applications available for S60 as there are for the iPhone or Android phones, but the number is ever increasing. Overall, the Nuron has most of the features that you could want, but the operating system could be improved. The user interface is not very refined, which is a big disadvantage but probably fairly easy to fix on Nokia’s part. The features on the Nuron are great, except for the fact that it does not have WiFi, but this is easily made up for with the 3G support. The camera could also be a little better with the addition of flash and autofocus. I would say that the Nuron is not worth the price that T-mobile is offering it for, maybe if the user interface were to be improved, but with the current features and software, it is just not worth it. If you can find the Nuron for a good price and you are not expecting too much I would buy it, but if you expect a lot from a smartphone, I would get an Android phone or an iPhone.
The iPod Touch review will be coming shortly and you can expect reviews for both the Nokia 5230 Nuron and the iPhone coming up in a couple of days.
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